Currently, with the rapid development of the Internet industry and Internet technology, a lot of rich media has been continuously produced on the Internet. The rich media can include audio, pictures, video, and other media information. In response to the demanding of the rich media, more and more Internet websites need to be accelerated by using content delivery network (CDN).
A CDN normally contains a source server (also known as a source station), and multiple caching servers (also known as node servers), where the caching servers are used for caching data. When a user visits a resource, the user can be preferentially directed to the nearest caching server to obtain the resource to improve the response speed. If the caching servers do not cache the required resource, a return-to-source request can be sent to obtain the corresponding resource from the source server. However, a large number of concurrent return-to-source requests in the CDN can generate a significant strain on the source station. Therefore, CDN operators typically provide additional storage as a return-to-source alternative solution in order to reduce the cost of data storage and the pressure of return-to-source for the source station.
However, the return-to-source alternative solution in the existing techniques has the following disadvantages:
(1) For cross-operator, and/or cross-room storage application scenarios, it cannot provide efficient file distribution solutions.
(2) For the various types of rich media, it does not provide post-processing functions, such as image format conversion, image thumbnail, video transcoding, format conversion, video slicing, and live stream playback.
(3) It cannot support customer diversified access methods, such as file transfer protocol (FTP), remote sync (Rsync), hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), and custom application programming interface (API).